Photo courtesy of greatdance.com

In case you were wondering, Social Media is taking over the world.  Facebook statistics are astounding!  Over 350 million users with 50% of them logging on daily.  What does this have to do with marketing? Well, the fact is simple.  If you create a Facebook Fan Page, you are sure to promote your product or company in an organic way (through people “liking it” and sharing with others).  Facebook is comprised of the younger and older, friends, siblings, parents, grandparents, colleagues, students, and the list goes on!  Essentially, it reaches everyone.  With people actively using it every day, it is easy to see why it would be a great marketing tool.  Visiture can help you create profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or help you optimize the ones you already have.  Because these sites have so many pages pointing to them and are being updated so frequently, they are often at the top of the natural results on Google and Yahoo!.

In the late 90’s ketchup sales were flat. The industry was looking for a way to get people to consume more ketchup. Even though the answer was sitting right in front of them on the table, the ketchup industry couldn’t see it. Heinz first thought the answer was to make green, even purple, colored ketchup. But people didn’t want multi-colored ketchup, they wanted easier ketchup. Consumers were tired of sticking a knife down a narrow bottle neck to clear the blockage, only to have an excess glob of ketchup come pouring out on to their fries. The upside-down ketchup bottle solved this problem. It got more ketchup out of the bottle, but it also got it out of the bottle neatly.The upside-down innovation created another opportunity. Because people could now get more ketchup out of the bottle, the industry suspected that consumers would want…more ketchup! So they made bigger bottles. With the larger upside-down bottle, people started using more and more ketchup. They consumed the larger bottles almost as quickly as they consumed the smaller bottles. When the bottle size moved from 24 to 46 ounces, people consumed 78 percent more ketchup!You are hampered by the curse of knowledge. But just like the ketchup industry, innovation may be sitting right in front of you on the table. Look at your current product or service. What can you turn upside down to increase demand? If you do, will customers want a bigger container?

-Jay Ehret, themarketingspot.blogspot.com